Clara Waits
by Pelman
Summary: She faces the Doctor and says the words that have been turning in the back of her head, words that must be spoken, words that, once released, she's not sure either of them can come back from. But they must be said. "Kill the Moon" Episode Tag.


Clara waits.

She waits as they stand on the beach, watching the moon explode and the creature fly off and the egg shell disintegrate. Waits as the Doctor expounds on the future of the human race, the glee in his voice utterly at odds with the churning in the pit of her stomach. Waits as she nods goodbye to Captain Lundvik, her mouth curving upward in a small smile, because at the end of the day, she has to respect this woman who was willing to die for what she thought was right. Waits as she bustles Courtney off the TARDIS, mouth speaking in route sentences, mind a million distant miles away.

Then she turns. Then she pulls the lever down and stops the TARDIS. Then she faces the Doctor and says the words that have been waiting in the back of her head, words that must be spoken, words that, once released, she's not sure either of them can come back from.

But they must be said.

"Tell me what you knew."

He regards her for a second before flicking his eyes down to the console. She can almost see the wheels turning in his head. Trying to figure out why she's asking. Trying to figure out what he should say.

Clara waits. She can do the stone-faced thing too.

He finally looks back up at her. "Nothing!" he says, flippantly gesturing to his head, "I told you, I've got gray areas!" His tone is placating.

She doesn't take her eyes off him. "Yeah. I noticed. "

She isn't talking about the gray hair. That's fine. That's simple. She's never cared about the gray hair. She isn't friends with the Doctor because he's a pretty boy. She's friends with the Doctor because he is _the Doctor_. Stalwart adventurer. Doer of good. Righter of wrongs. Seeker of beauty. Lover of truth. He has shown her an entirely new universe, one that is beautiful and terrible and frightening and awesome, and he has cared enough to take her along for the ride.

But now…

Gray areas.

Psi was right. She has been making excuses.

But not…they weren't excuses. Because she knows him.

Knew him.

Thought she knew him.

"Tell me what you knew, Doctor, or else I'll smack you so hard you'll regenerate." She is slightly impressed that she manages to keep her voice even and steady. Because inside she feels a raging tumult that has been steadily building and rising over the last several hours and the fury is heavy on her throat and white hot behind her eyes.

Some of this must leak through her voice because the Doctor looks at her, looks at her with the same eyes that have seen Star Whales and Exploding Suns and Things Long Since Dead, and she can see he realizes that he needs to choose his next words carefully.

Clara waits.

He paces away and then turns around to face her once again. His words come slowly, with great reluctance. "I knew that eggs are not bombs. I know they don't usually destroy their nests." He stalks towards her, his words becoming softer, his face softening into a smile. "Essentially what I knew was that you would always make the best choice. I had faith that you would always make the right choice."

And as his smile turns into a grin she can feel his words hanging in the air. If this was a fairy tale, everyone would live happily ever after at this point. The Doctor and the Impossible Girl, together again, and they would go sweeping off on their next grand adventure.

But this isn't a fairy tale.

She figured that out a long time ago.

She digests his words, and they are stilted and broken and choking. And she half-laughs, half-sobs as she says, "Honestly, do you have music playing in your head when you say rubbish like that?"

He backs away from her, shrugging. Dismissing her. "It wasn't my decision to make. I told you."

Clara doesn't understand. She wants to understand. She's trying so hard. But when she tries to think it through, logically, rationally…all she can see is the Doctor disappearing into the TARDIS without so much as a backwards glance.

All she can hear is her own voice, sounding increasingly desperate, as she calls out, "Doctor?...Doctor?...DOCTOR?"

Her heart clenches, and she begins grasping at straws. "Yeah, well why'd you do it? What-was it, was it for Courtney? Was that it? Because-"

The Doctor grabs onto this thought like a life line. "Well, she really is something special now." He starts up the stairs, picking up one of the many books lying scattered about the TARDIS. "First woman on the moon. Saved the earth from itself. And rather bizarrely, she becomes the President of the United States. She met this bloke called Blinovitch-"

Clara lets his words wash over her as she slowly walks around the console, the prattle familiar, the tone oft-used, but she finds no comfort in it now. Because if there was no special reason…if he simply left…if he…

She can't finish her thoughts. She doesn't know why. She keeps thinking about the moon. And that moment. That moment seared like ice upon her memory. On the moon. The lights were dark. The time was up. And she had finally realized.

_He isn't coming back._

So she had said, "Okay," and watched the numbers tick down and wished that she were already dead.

And now tears are coming out of her eyes and there's a hot choking feeling in her throat and before she knows it words start spilling out. Words that have built up over the months and she has tried so HARD to get along and to make do and he does nothing, and the utter hurt and betrayal that she feels surprises her with its intensity.

"You know what, shut up! I am so sick of listening to you."

That freezes him. He stops, stares at her for a long moment, then tosses his book and comes down the steps. There is a slight hint of urgency in his movements, as if he is aware for the first time that some line has been crossed. When he speaks, his voice is softer than it has been in a long time. "Yeah, well, I-I didn't do it for Courtney. I didn't know what was going to happen." He stops, stands there, lights of the TARDIS pulsing gently around him. He looks tired. "What, do you think I'm lying?"

Clara can't answer that. She can't find the words. Her heart feels as if it is being removed, piece by piece, and it is all she can do to draw in another breath. "I don't know! I don't know." Her voice wavers but she no longer cares. "But if you didn't do it for her, I mean…" The words won't come. The Doctor has lied to her before. He has left her before. But this is different.

And she can't find the words.

But she has to try.

"Do you know what? It was, it was cheap, it was pathetic, no, no, no…it was patronizing." And as the words tumble out, her anger rises as well, and she embraces it and lets it sweep her up because anger is better, anger is safer, anger doesn't make her feel weak. And there is plenty of fuel for this particular fire because if there is one thing this Doctor excels at it is poking Clara again and again and again, over and over, until he finally finds a spot that makes her rear up.

Underneath it all Clara can't shake the image of a man standing in front of her saying, "Just see me."

_Just see me._

But that image shatters, replaced by one of the disappearing back of the Doctor, coat flaring as he vanishes into the TARDIS, and her anger surges so high that she trembles. She points a finger at the man standing in front of her now. "That was you, patting girls on the back, saying, 'Well you're big enough to go to the shops by yourself now. Toddle along.'"

The Doctor recoils. His eyebrows are creased and questioning, his lips pinched and his jaw stretched in a sort of grimace. "No, that was me allowing you to make a choice about your own future." His voice is strange. Soft. Hesitating. The Doctor never hesitates. "That was me…," he pauses, pressing his lips together, searching for the right words, "…respecting you."

Clara can't understand this. She can't deal with this.

She can't allow this.

She goes back to her reservoirs of anger. "Oh my God, really? Was it? Yeah, well respected is not how I feel." Utterly without warning, her anger vanishes, and she feels as though her very heart has been rent apart. She turns away from the Doctor, unwilling to let him see her, unwilling to let him see how much this hurts. And as she does, a stray thought strikes the very core of her mind.

_She likes this one better. _

Her universe blinks, self-realization piling on with a weight heavier than an embryonic moon. A treacherous sob escapes her throat. One, and then another, the sound echoing harshly in the TARDIS.

The Doctor appears stricken. "Right, okay… uh."

She likes this one better. And she thought he liked her too. She knows he's the same person. That might hurt the worst of all.

Because she thought they were friends.

And friends don't do what he just did.

She isn't upset because she thinks he used her, or pressured her into something she couldn't live with. She isn't upset because he left her, or lied to her.

She's upset because she thought he was her friend.

And friends don't have to prove themselves. They just have to be.

Her anguish sings, and in the midst of it she is able to confess that which she has been trying to hide even from herself. "I nearly didn't press that button. I nearly got it wrong." She makes herself look up, makes herself look the Doctor in the eyes, makes him see. "That was you, my friend," and her voice catches on that word, "making me scared, making me feel like a bloody idiot-"

The Doctor points a finger out. "Language." His face looks incredibly strange.

Clara loses it.

"Oh, don't you ever tell me to mind my language. Don't you ever tell me to take the stabilizers off my bike, and don't you DARE lump me in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable." She feels hollow inside. She is done. Sick of making excuses and sick of being scared and sick of trying to be everything to everybody…

She is sick of caring.

She takes one step towards the Doctor. Two. She no longer feels conflicted about the words she is trying to say. She ignores the tears streaking down her cheeks and says what she knows to be true. "You walk our earth, Doctor. You breathe our air." Her words are calm, measured. Inside she feels as if she is slowly dying. "You make us your friend and that is your moon too."

Memories flash in her mind. Calling the Doctor for the first time. Riding on his motorbike. Landing on a submarine. Meeting on Wednesdays. Visiting the Clariburn House. Defeating Mrs. Gillyflower. Being air lifted by UNIT. Christmas with the Doctor. Traveling to Victorian London. Meeting Robin Hood. Protecting Coal Hill. Adventure after adventure after adventure.

All on earth.

"And you can damn well help us when we need it!"

_You make us your friend._

As she speaks, the Doctor's face grows colder and colder, until it seems he is made of ice, no movement, no life. When he speaks, his voice is low. "I was helping."

"What, by clearing off?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, well CLEAR OFF!"

The words hang in the air. The universe shudders.

She sucks in a breath. "Go on." She is losing it. Any second she is going to break down. "You can clear off. Get back in your lonely, your lonely bloody TARDIS and you don't come back." Bitter words, hurtful words, and she sees his face tighten imperceptibly. For a split second she is glad, but the gladness is swallowed up in utter desolation.

The words are out.

She is lost.

Clara rushes past the Doctor, heads for the door, not knowing where she is going to go, not knowing what she is going to do, only knowing she has to get away, has to get away from him, needs to be alone.

"Clara…Clara!"

She hears his voice, an obscene echo of her cries earlier this day, and unlike him, she stops, and turns, and faces the man calling out her name. When she speaks, her voice sounds foreign to her own ears, measured and distant and cold.

"You go away, okay. You go a long way away."

Then she slips through the door and shuts it behind her.

* * *

><p>It is much, much later.<p>

Clara lies on her bed, eyes staring upwards at nothing. She thinks of a little boy, on a bed in a barn, who is so very scared and who can't stop crying. She thinks of a young man, the first time they meet, as he says, "You don't run out on the people you care about. Wish I was more like that." She thinks of an older man, standing in the street, arms at his side, saying, "Please, just…just see me."

Clara waits.


End file.
